peasepud

That would have saved me a lot of typing Hold on, those articles dont say anything to back up your argument that we would have gone bust, yes lots do it but as many have pointed out its irrelevant to assume we would have if fatty Ash hadnt ridden in on his white shirehorse, in fact the first one points out that our chances of going into Administration have increased dramatically because we were purchased by him and led into relegation. Feel free to explain to me how that backs up your Ashley/Shep argument like.

who can we pin this on?

Tell you what Stevie, if Simpson leaves in the Summer Im holding you personally responsible.

I assumed Danny Simpson had signed up there

Good luck to the lad and I hope he goes on to be the big thing. It does however show the lack of depth in our squad when we're pulling in a lad with such little experience. I wonder how much his contract is? DL so what you on now as a sparky son? MR £150pw plus overtime sir DL no bother kidda, 5 year contract on £160 pw you've earned it son.

Have to admit, Im with Matt on this one. Its twitter you only get 140 chars, to write out Manchester United every time you want to mention them in a game against Chelsea would be a pain in the arse to say the least. Although get him to use ManUre and its the same chars.

hmm now theres an idea.... [font="Courier New"]DELETE ALL FROM DATABASE WHERE poster = Gemmill AND tone = pisstake[/font] admittedly it'll only leave you with three posts where you talk about your nacking nad.

the issue isnt the size of disk space we're using ie avatars etc but the amount of data in the database tables. I agree that 500Mb limit is too small but the hosts are insistent on it so we'll be moving. What we cant afford to have though is the potential for them closing it down all of a sudden before we do that. I can and have ran SQL queries to identify threads over a certain age with 1 or less reply and can tell the system to delete those in one go. Thats not a problem Multiple topics take up a little extra space as there would be multiple entries in the topics table and then entries in the posts one. ie 1 topic with 10 posts creates 11 records, 1 in topics and 10 in posts. 5 topics with 2 records each create 15 records, 5 in topics , 10 in posts. Id imagine though that as theres no way to automate identifying them then the time to find those would far outweigh the benefit. Not sure at all whats happened with the PMs is it across the board? or only ones over a certain age?

Thing is PP, we know exactly what they did to deal with the financial position the club was in, and they absolutely didn't sit like gormless idiots, rather, they did an obscenely quick cut and run. or you could use your own argument that they sold up to ensure the future of the club, you cant have it both ways. You cant slate them for not being able to sort the finances, state that Ashley is the person who saved us and then slate Hall/Shepherd for selling to him in the 1st place! "They" however didnt up and run, Hall did yes, he made a deal with Ashley behind Shepherds back and took the cash. I dont agree with doing that but its what he did. We always knew however that Hall, more than Shepherd was in it for the money. Doesnt mean however that it was their only avenue or that they would have done nothing had Ashley not turned up with the gormless look on his face that screamed out "Im too rich to bother looking into things". Thats the issue here, the assumption that two of the most successful businessmen in the North East would have been unable to come up wth a plan to raise the income of the club and/or additional finance other than a Barclays loan. There was always Ocean finance.

I thought this was going to be a post saying "theres a bloke lying here having a heart attack what do I do, help me folks!" top work though TS

the database that runs this site is getting dangerously large and shortly we will need to look at moving hosts to one that can accomodate us (to give you an idea of the problem this site uses over 95% of all the resources the sites I have on my hosting use). I need to carry out urgent work on it and drop some lesser functions and stuff down. One of the things we'll need to do at least in short term is kill off stuff from the database. This includes members and threads. So far Ive killed off well over 1000 members by simply removing anyone who had no posts and hadnt logged on for over two years. What Im now looking to do now is reduce things further with the following. Reduce the allowable size of inboxes from 50 to 10 items. Unless people can come up with a good enough reasoning for needing to keep more than 10 at a time? This will mean that I'll be running a script to kill off all the additional PMs at some time soon, it would be handy though if everyone can have a nip in and delete those you dont want beforehand. Im thinking of killing off any thread that had less than two replies and was over 2 years old, we would prefer not to lose threads and posts but at the same time. If you made a thread 3 years ago and nobody replied or all you got was a single then it couldnt really have been much cop could it and therefore nobody is likely to go hunting for it. These are the sort of things Im talking about. Pick any of these and stick it after http://www.toontastic.net/board/index.php?showtopic= to see what I mean 15693, 15684, 15615, 15659, 90, 15641, 15646, 15634, 15648, 15711, 15710, 182, 15628, 15611, 15701, 254, 268, 290, 317, 323, 325, 358, 395, 15609, 406, 405, 447, 455, 944, 488 If there are any SQL geniuses out there I would really like to come up with a script that removes excess quotes, those threads where people quote a quote of a quote of a quote of a quote of a quote and follow it with a those posts use a huge amount of space. What Id like to do is kill off all but the last 2 or 3 quotes in the post. I know I'll need Regular expressions but its losing me big time. If theres any other ideas? automatic ban for the first to say "delete all of x's posts".

Ive gone back to the V6 Vectra as I couldnt stand the Diesel mondeo anymore. 23mpg Im getting now though

Without going full circle in two threads, theres absoultely zero proof of that.

I have no blind faith, the bit you've just said has proven my point. Shepherd wasnt sat there scratching his arse and permanently ringing Barclays to say "can I borrow another £40m for a trophy signing?" from what you say they were looking at other options to raise the money needed to move the club on and thats my point. This football club had been dragged up from the brink of the abyss by Shepherd & Hall, there is therefore no proof that they were unable to do the same again. To imagine they were sat like gormless idiots without a notion of how to raise finance does an injustice to two of the regions most successful businessmen imo. To say they were screwed and had no ideas is wrong therefore. As for Moat, that lad was a joke and had no intentions of anything other than making money. His offer was to buy the club on tick, taking it off Ashleys hands at the time to get him out of the firing line and then paying him with money financed from the club itself. Once he owned it outright his plan was to sell and make himself a fortune. I think Ashleys scum but that 80s reject singing fish selling smirking bastard would have been the death of this club full stop. Theres all kinds of reasons why we wouldnt be in the position we are now under Shepherd, from the advertising that we're currently gifting to SD (to promote the ground name sale) through to the debacle we have with shirts. Have we had a successful shirt release since Ashley took over? Shirt sales have dropped in line wth the quality, obviously I cant say for definite but our long standing link with Adidas was doing us no harm now we have Sports Direct quality clothing at Louis Vitton prices. At least under Shepherd we were being sold clothes of a good quality at rip off prices. And for all his lack of class theres no way on earth Shepherd would have sold some of the tat you can now find gracing our stores, sterotypical fat geordie t-shirt anyone?

Bloomin board crashing lost my post! I think that the permanent thrashing of Shpeherd based on him spending money is naive at best. Im anything but a lover of Shepherd and have no issue in battering him on any one of a dozen things hes done that I dont agree with. Spending money on players to achieve the kind of football I may never again see in my lifetime is not one of them. The assumption seems to be that Freddy had no other ideas, thoughts etc. How do we know that? at the end of the day if the credit lines were gone then they were gone. he would have had to do something different, either through refinancing the club, bringing in other investors or cutting costs and maximising revenues. Im fairly confident though that if he'd done the latter it wouldnt have been at the expense of our best players with a hope that we'd survive. I have enough belief in the fat man to know that he'd have looked at ways to increase our revenues and cut our costs in other areas first. I see nobody has answered my question on our current debt levels though.

Im sorry I must have missed the post on this, where does this figure of £30m per year come from?

I would never attempt to argue that everything Shepherd did was good, far from it but I do have one simple overriding belief that "success on the pitch breeds increased revenue", that was Shepherds mantra and frankly should be what all football clubs strive for. Running as we do on the logic that we should break even and all will be good regardless of how we achieve that financial sweet spot is not the way to run a football club. The sales of players key to our season is a fine example. Maybe we've hit lucky with Carroll but relegation can be attributed to the sale of Given, with him in goal we would have gained that extra point. Selling Carroll was the same gamble and fortunately it appears to have paid off. Will next years gamble be as fortunate? What happens when the couple of players we buy a season dont include a Tiote or Ben Arfa but more Perch's? Both chairmen have gambled on players, Shepherds was that purchasing proven big names would do the job, he was unlucky with the likes of Owen but none of the 20k that turned up to chant his name predicted that just as us on here didnt. One thing that did come from it though was the increase in merchandising/sponsorship etc that come from these types of signings which helped to increase the revenue. Ashleys gamble is on cheap players making it big to then be sold and a portion of the proceeds invested in the next "big thing". Id be interested to see any examples of successful teams based on that model.

I still dont believe that we were a financial shambles, yes we were in debt but as proven with man U, Arsenal etc that is still sustainable as long as you have income. Nobody knows what Shepherd would have done without the lines of credit, he'd have had to do something, whether that was financing it himself/ through others to provide loans as Ashley has done or cost cutting (as Ashley has also done). One thing is for certain he would have looked to maximise the revenues rather than simply minimise outgoings. Its been an argument Ive kept repeating for well over 2 years now. There are two ways to increse profit/reduce debt. The first is to slash costs to the bone, the second increase income. Ashleys route one, Shepherd would have been route 2. Ashleys results in us becoming a selling club, I dont doubt that we would have struggled under Shepherd for the couple of years following however I do believe he would have been working on getting us back up there and not simply being content to survive. My posts however were in response to NJS and the assumption that Shepherd was no better than Ashley at bringing in revenue. I think its clear thats not the case.

Im more than happy to include that stat, you do realise that the 2008 figures are Shepherd dont you as these would relate to the 2006/07 financial year, just as 2010 relates to 2008/09 (ie pre relegation) And I cant see how relegation can be ignored as a factor unless you're now seriously stating that on field factors should not be taken into account when talking finances???? This whole argument is based on the chairman/owners abilities to raise revenue. As a football club, the bulk of that revenue would come from the on field activities. The whole point myself, LM and others are making. If Shepherd had got us relegated (which he didnt) then I would have included the figures from that. Income increases with the quality on the pitch, Shepherd knew that and worked towards that, at first he was successful and we hit CL and reaped the rewards, later on he wasnt but he still strived for it. The very thing that many on here are arguing he shouldnt have done. Ashley does the opposite, hopes to stay in the league on a shoestring. Its easy to see who was the most successful at raising income.

You've still got me lost with this like. I didnt realise that NJS had stated he wanted the things Shepherd did that nobody else in the world ever did. At the end of the day he knew that success on the pitch and expanding into that market went hand in hand. This is where I sympathise with LM totally. Fans who are willing to sacrifice that last bit for financial "success" cant really be fans. You cant be otherwise all you would want is success on the pitch it is all that should matter. Im still totally bemused by this gem, maybe its because Im thick but I thought NJS had asked for proof that Shepherd was doing things to bring in money that Ashley wasnt. Under your logic then that argument is proven using the rich list. 2008 2010 Feel free to analyse it whichever way you want however they all show a club doing better in 2007 than 2009. Rich List placing - Better in 2007 Value higher in 2007 Revenue higher in 2007 Operating income higher in 2007 As for debt, in 2007 ours was 43% of our value, the same as Arsenal and 14% less than Man Uniteds. Now its shown as 8% yet according to Dekka we now owe a total of £150m, 139.5m of which is to Mikey . Even assuming the value of the club has not decreased (and Im sure it has) then that would make our current debt % just over 75%. Remind me again how thats progress? How about using the Deloittes Football Money league as our comparison then if the Forbes list is useless? so, yes we were slowly dropping down the league positions as other clubs got richer but generally our income under Shepherd was fairly stable, now look at it. However you put it I cant see where MA is doing better than FS, thats not a defence of Shepherd, its a slating of our "saviour"

I'll give you one simple one, he wouldnt have stood by and allowed us to get relegated as Ashley did so there you go £60m. I have no actual figures so I could argue it was 5m plus and you could argue its a tenner however under FS we were moving into the Asian market and creating deals and tie ins with Australasia and the likes. All of which work towards increasing awareness of the brand and the subsequent sales of merchandising that goes with it. Man United do it so well and Im farily sure that a few years ago we were in the top 3 or 4 of recognised names when it came to these markets. You cant go into a public square in Japan without seeing a Man U top and this is one of the things that Shepherd was working on. Another simple proof of it is in the richest clubs list, where are we in that now? 2007 - 13th $260m 2008 - 16th $300m 2009 - 19th $285m 2010 - 20th $198m So since the end of Shepherd (which would be the 2008 figures) we've dropped 4 places and $102m Man U meanwhile have stayed top and upped their worth by a further $35m. That's a ridiculous comparison to make. For a start, the Asian market was hardly some genius idea that FS came up with, everyone knew it was an expanding market. You can try all the PR shite you want out there but the fact is that 95% of Asian fans will choose a team to support based on success on the pitch. We were out of the CL a few years before FS sold up and therefore weren't of any interest to those in the Asian market. Also, the Rich List is a misnomer, it is based on income rather while ignoring outgoings, no one should take it too seriously. fuck off man so the Forbes rich list is bollocks is it? so a reduction of $102m by whatever means isnt a sign that things arent good?

I'll give you one simple one, he wouldnt have stood by and allowed us to get relegated as Ashley did so there you go £60m. I have no actual figures so I could argue it was 5m plus and you could argue its a tenner however under FS we were moving into the Asian market and creating deals and tie ins with Australasia and the likes. All of which work towards increasing awareness of the brand and the subsequent sales of merchandising that goes with it. Man United do it so well and Im farily sure that a few years ago we were in the top 3 or 4 of recognised names when it came to these markets. You cant go into a public square in Japan without seeing a Man U top and this is one of the things that Shepherd was working on. Another simple proof of it is in the richest clubs list, where are we in that now? 2007 - 13th $260m 2008 - 16th $300m 2009 - 19th $285m 2010 - 20th $198m So since the end of Shepherd (which would be the 2008 figures) we've dropped 4 places and $102m Man U meanwhile have stayed top and upped their worth by a further $35m.

The nusc showed that once many parties are involved the in fighting is too much and nothing effective whatsoever is done. This small group have impressed me more in a couple of months than the nusc has in almost 2 years. Keep it up boys. I would disagree that totally. NUSC worked, its problem was that the club refused to deal with them as they took offence to the early protest position, there was no in-fighting with NUSC and even when it became NUST and then imploded it wasnt down to different groups being involved. NUSC/T did its homework, we knew that dealings with Esland were merely PR, they were done though, members of NUSC had regular meetings with him and still do they arent however classed as dealing with the club or at least not any part of the club that had clout. If you deal with Esland then you're basically dealing with a receptionist, the man who you can pass your thoughts on, he'll take them away and write them up into club speak to his boss, who may then pass it onto his and so on until finally it drops on Dekkas desk and he bins it. Hes a nice bloke, SE but he is simply a PR man, he will give the clubs message out, he doesnt have clout or say or anything to do with the decisions made. As a result anyone can have a meeting with him, Toontastic could schedule in a meeting and discuss stuff over a coffee. It would mean fuck all though and we'd be no nearer to sorting anything out. He'd take away our concerns, tell us the club are working towards great things and put on the nice, caring face of the club. Once he gets back into his office though he might as well file the notes of the meeting straight in the bin.

Seriously man, give your fucking head a shake

I think I may use this as my sig because its spot on for how I feel. Yes we had debt, yes changes were needed but there was no way on this earth that we were going bust. This notion that the coming credit crunch would have wiped us out while FS sat back blind to its consequences is farcical. Shepherd had his faults, many of them but a lack of business sense is definitely not one of them. Under him we had far greater revenue streams than we do now and thats without plastering our ground with tacky advertising and without ever contemplating changing its name. Never mind selling off every asset we own.